Archives
Meta
Author Archives: theamericanplutarch
Why the Last Verse in the Gospel of John is so important to Me as a Historian
What I like about narrative history is the story of a person in the past. I find someone I can identify with, someone whose life intrigues me, a life that I wish to relive, as it were, re-create. I love … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, books, Christianity, God's Providence
Tagged bible, Biography, books, Christianity, faith, god, history, Jesus
Leave a comment
Georges Lemaître and the Big Bang: The Limits of Piety
Georges Lemaître was a Catholic priest and military veteran who in the 1920s and 1930s made astonishing theoretical discoveries that overturned the steady-state universe, the eternal unchanging universe that astronomers had believed in for millennia. Father Lemaître argued that the … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, History of Science
Tagged big-bang, Christianity, god, Love, philosophy, Piety, Religion, Science
Leave a comment
Love and the Old Testament
Thousands of years ago Abraham, a herder traveling from Mesopotamia, came to a land he called Canaan where the “god of the high mountain,” a jealous god who demanded exclusivity, announced Himself. Abraham and his descendants experienced a singular relationship … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Love
Tagged Agape, bible, Christianity, Eros, god, Jesus, Love
Leave a comment
Eros and Agape: The Greek Origins of Christian Love
In his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI looked over the course of his life beginning before World War II, in which he witnessed firsthand the propensity of human beings to hate, interspersed with episodes of what the world called love. … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Love
Tagged Agape, Christianity, Eros, faith, god, Jesus, Love
Leave a comment
Plato’s Ideal Society: When will it Come about?
In Plato’s Dialogues, he argued that there is a Truth, and that this Truth is comprised of the Ideal Forms, metaphysical truths from which all concrete existence is derived (Good, Justice, Beauty). In Republic, Plato argued that only philosophers can … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Government, Love
Tagged Christianity, faith, Jesus, Love, philosophy, plato, socrates
Leave a comment
Do not Fear Death, because Perfect Love Casts out Fear
Death is the last act of life that occurs in an instant in time, yet it opens to eternity. Hence the moment and the eternal are combined at once in death. Death is a time when our perceptions of life … Continue reading
The Writings of Francesco Petrarca, “Petrarch”
Reading the Roman historian Livy’s account of Philip V of Macedon’s ascent of a peak in the Hebrus Mountains inspired in the Italian Francesco Petrarca, Petrarch, the desire to attempt the ascent of a similar summit. Petrarch recorded the adventures … Continue reading
Posted in Biography, Christianity, European history
Tagged augustine, books, Christianity, history, philosophy, Religion, renaissance
Leave a comment
Of Love and Empathy
What is love, and is it related to empathy? Can a person feel empathy if they do not feel love? Can I love a person if I do not empathize with them? Great philosophers have written great books about such … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Love
Tagged Christ, Christianity, empathy, Healing, knowing, Love, mental-health, relationships, Virgin Mary
Leave a comment
Reflections on Erich Fromm, “The Art of Loving”
For Erich Fromm (1900-1980), the German-American psychologist, love is active power, where one preserves one’s own integrity. Love helps overcome separation and anxiety, stimulates union. Love is part of a need to know, to know someone else or self. It … Continue reading
Posted in Love
Tagged charity, Christianity, empathy, faith, god, hope, knowledge, Love
Leave a comment
What is True History?
The mirror of the past is the only way to peer at the image of what is human. The reflection is darkened by time and sin. Specters of the dead, haunting the dusty stacks of long-ago thoughts, turn up repeatedly, … Continue reading
Posted in General Essays
Leave a comment
The American Plutarch 